The Navajo stared before him with apparent stolidity. Tyope continued,—
"You pretend to despise us now, yet enough has remained within your heart, from the time when you lived at the Tyuonyi and slept in the estufa of Shyuamo hanutsh, to make my daughter appear in your eyes better, more handsome, and more useful, than the girls of the Dinne!"
The features of the Dinne did not move; he kept silent. But his right hand played with the string of the bow that lay on the wolf's skin.
"Nacaytzusle," the other began again, "I promised to assist you to obtain the girl against her will. Mind! Mitsha, my daughter, will never go to a home of the Dinne of her own accord, but I would have stolen her for your sake. Now I say to you that I have promised you this child of mine, and I have promised your people all the green stones of my tribe. The first promise I shall fulfil if you wish. The other, you may tell your tribe, I will not hold to longer."
The Navajo looked at him in a strange, doubtful way and replied,—
"You have asked me to be around the Tyuonyi day after day, night after night, to watch every tree, every shrub, merely in order to find out what your former wife, Shotaye, was doing, and to kill her if I could. You have demanded," he continued, raising his voice, while he bent forward and darted at the Indian from the Rito a look of suppressed rage, "that the Dinne should come down upon the Tyuonyi at the time when the Koshare should fast and pray, and should kill Topanashka, the great warrior, so that you might become maseua in his place! Now I tell you that I shall not do either!"
The eyes of the young savage flamed like living coals.
"Then you shall not have my child!" exclaimed Tyope.
"I will get her. You may help me or not!"
"I dare you to do it," Tyope hissed.